Monday, April 17, 2006

California Transplants

Has anyone else noticed that many of the loudest voices in the Anti-Immigrant side of the debate in Utah are from people who fled California?

Utah just does not have a problem yet. We have 85,000 illegal immigrants in Utah. That is roughly the same size as the population of Utahn's living in polygamous families. Estimates of Mormon polygamists in Utah generally range from 60,000-80,000. 85,000 is roughly the population of Odgen. Our illegal immigrant population is just under half the size of Salt Lake City.

California, NM, Arizona and Texas are the places where the problem is most severe. The illegal immigrant population in Ca is several times the population of Utah.

The question is if the people fleeing Ca are just xenophobes, or if they really are telling us the direction that this debate is taking?